The ETA member 'Gaddafi' is acquitted of a murder by applying a recent doctrine of the Strasbourg Court

ETA member Juan Carlos Iglesias Chouzas, alias 'Gadafi', during his trial held on March 24 for the murder of a civil guard of which he has been acquitted. Emilio Naranjo (EFE)

The National Court has acquitted the former ETA leader Juan Carlos Iglesias Chouzas, alias

, of a murder committed in 1991 in Bilbao by applying a recent ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), based in Strasbourg, which denies legal validity to statements made by detainees held incommunicado without the presence of a defense lawyer. their choice when this limitation has not been sufficiently motivated.

This judicial decision, which can be appealed, is the second acquittal of a member of the terrorist organization in recent months after applying this doctrine of the Strasbourg court.

The other acquittal is that of ETA member Gorka Palacios for an attack in Madrid in 2001 that caused around twenty injuries.

Several victims' associations warn that the ruling of the European justice system is going to condition the trials still pending against members of ETA.

The judgment of the Strasbourg Court used by the National High Court to acquit Gaddafi came at the request of another ETA member, Xabier Atristain, who was sentenced to 17 years in prison for illegal possession of explosives and membership in a terrorist organization.

Atristain denounced before the European justice that the statements he had given after his arrest were not valid because he had been placed in solitary confinement ―a figure contemplated in Spanish legislation for suspected terrorists or members of organized crime groups― which, in cases highly valued, prevents the detainee from being assisted by a trusted lawyer, having to settle for a court-appointed lawyer with whom, moreover, he cannot meet in advance to prepare his statement.

The European justice concluded last January -in a ruling that has been firm since May 9- that although this restriction of rights is legal, it necessarily requires a judicial order expressly and individually motivating the reasons for its application, something that he considers did not happen with Atristain.

The European magistrates considered, therefore, the violation of article 6 of the European Convention on the right to a fair trial, in its paragraphs 1 (right to a fair trial) and 3 (right to defend oneself or to be assisted by a defense attorney). of your choice).

Following this ruling, the ETA member was released while waiting for the National High Court to annul his sentence.

In Gaddafi's case, the court that acquitted him did not question the conditions of his detention and subsequent interrogation - he was arrested by the French police in February 2000 and subsequently extradited - but that of four other ETA members whose testimony had become the main evidence against him to accuse him of having participated in the attack that cost the life, on January 31, 1991, of former civil guard Francisco Díaz de Cerio in the Bilbao neighborhood of Otxarkoaga.

In the trial, held last March, the prosecutor asked Iglesias Chouzas for 40 years in prison for this crime.

The magistrates conclude in their ruling, released this Friday, that the testimonies given by these four ETA members ―Raúl Ángel Fuentes, Jon Mirena San Pedro, Jesús María Mendinueta and José Manuel Fernández,

In this sense, the ruling emphasizes the need for the application of the incommunicado regime to be sufficiently motivated, since during it the detainees remain "in a situation of special vulnerability at the mercy of possible pressure, coercion, mistreatment and, in situations extreme, including possible torture as a way to bend their will and be a useful source of information against themselves or third parties.”

A justification of its necessity that, he adds, does not appear in the case: "There is sufficient evidence that [the statements] were made incommunicado, both the police and the judicial ones, but neither the judicial resolutions nor references are recorded. sufficient to the legal reasoning contained in the orders for the extension of solitary confinement”, he adds.

Thus,

The ruling adds that the rest of the evidence presented in the case – two expert reports prepared by the Ertzaintza and the Civil Guard and the testimony of the taxi driver whose vehicle the commando stole to travel to the place where the victim was shot – are “insufficient to support a sentence of conviction” as requested by the prosecution and the private prosecution.

“All these indications, at most, would allow an attribution to

[to which Gaddafi belonged] as a plausible hypothesis, but without being able to establish it in terms of certainty, and above all, without being able to determine which of its members would have participated, or how they would have done it."

For all these reasons, it concludes that there is "a patent lack of valid and effective evidence" against the ETA member and agrees to his acquittal.

Iglesias Chouzas has been in prison in Spain since July 2003. He is serving several sentences totaling hundreds of years in prison for his participation in the murder of eight people.

The Ministry of the Interior classified him in second degree prison in December 2020 after he assumed prison legality and presented a document acknowledging the damage caused and his decision never to resort to violence again.

Gaddafi, currently in the Dueñas prison (Palencia), is one of the nine former ETA leaders against whom the lawsuit is directed, which has led the judge of the National Court Manuel García-Castellón to reopen the summary for the kidnapping and murder , in July 1997, by the then PP councilor in Ermua (Bizkaia) Miguel Ángel Blanco.